Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1896 — French Children Sent Out to Nurse. [ARTICLE]

French Children Sent Out to Nurse.

Formerly children of the best families were sent out to nurse, as shopkeepers’ children are now. The sous of country land owners, nursed on their own estates by farmers’ wives, often stayed on a year or two after they,were weaned, sharing the rough life around them, which if they could bear it made them very vigorous. I form my opinion of this by the samples I saw in my youth of men born before the Revolution. Once the child returned from the country to its family, it was placed, according to sex, in the hands of either a governess or an abbe, such as are still found in the old families of the Faubourg St. Germain. More frequently then than nowadays little girls began to study Latin with their brothers. Now we have the foreign nursemaid, who takes the child when it is just beginning to lisp, and before it knows how to speak its own language well. At present ah English or German nursemaid is to be found in every well-to-do family.—Century.